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The 2011 Trip
Part 95 – Happy 50th Bill & Fran – Prairie Schooner
 

Friday, March 4th, 2011

The temperature at 8AM was 56.0F under partly cloudy skies.

Today is Bill and Fran's 50th wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary. Joan and I celebrate ours in September and we will have to celebrate together then.

By 10AM Joan and the other girls had gone shopping for the day. At that time the temperature was 65.1F under scattered cloud.

At noon I came back from a dumpster run checking the mail and taking the following photograph. The temperature at that time was 74.7F under partly cloudy skies.

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This is for Bill and Sharon and is a newer model Prairie Schooner. Bill and Sharon bought a new one BS – Before Slideouts and still have it. Joan and I had many memories on spotting this one here in this park. We have camped a lot with Bill and Sharon especially over at Cottage Cove in Nova Scotia. One seldom sees a Prairie Schooner. They stopped the production after Bill's for a number of years.

The one Bill and Sharon have is in probably better shape than when they bought it and this brings up this foolish idea of banning any unit that is ten years old or older. Campgrounds are a lot like military bases. Those in charge come up with some of the same line of thinking we had to put up with on the military bases. One of the finest units we have run into over the years was a forty-five year old Holiday Rambler. This had been painstakingly restored and was pulled by a Chevy pickup of the same vintage and in the same shape as the trailer. To ban that from any campground is completely senseless. When they came out with the Dynamax I mention in part 78 the campgrounds were refusing them admittance because they were not a class A motorhome nor a class C. How dumb can you get?

This newer Prairie Schooner in this park belongs to Hans and Colleen from Minnesota. I did not realize this until I had this photograph home and looking at it. The letters on the back at the top are Hans K0HB and Colleen's K0CKB amateur radio call signs. I met Hans in the parking lot of the local grocery store. I recognized his call sign on his pickup license plate and introduced myself. The second character in each call sign is the figure zero. We put a bar through it in radio so we do not mistake it for the letter O. The 146.52 is the calling frequency on 2-meters VHF. Hans had told me he was monitoring 2-meters only and had no high frequency equipment with him. He is a big radiotelegraph operator in the world of amateur radio.

My east coast navy friends will recognize the CKB in Colleen's call. That was the call sign of the navy transmitter used for Morse Code practice around Halifax.

Today's forecast was a little off. They forecasted a high of 76F and at 2PM it was 78.2F under partly cloudy skies. One has to look very hard to find the partly cloudy. It did not affect the amount of sunshine. A beautiful day sitting out on the cement patio with a nice breeze blowing. Perfect!

We had 14023 kilohertz on all day. There was a little weak activity but nothing to get excited about it. Some of it actually sounded like a contest of some description.

Joan arrived home about 3PM with an armload of goodies having created inflation in several places. One of the clerks told them they did not know what they will do when we Canadians go home. She said they would have to let everyone go but her to run the store. The recession has hit hard here. The clerk in the grocery store stated everything had been frozen and that she would receive no pension. Apparently we Canadians with our pensions are making a big difference around here.

At 3:40PM the temperature was 79.4F and the Gold Canyon weather station was still calling it partly cloudy. One had to look hard to find the partly cloudy.

Joan and I sat outside until supper time. By 6:10PM supper was over and the dishes washed. The temperature was 73.1F under a clear sky.

Around 6:30PM we went over to John and Liz's campfire. We had a great time sitting around the fire. There were 11 of us under a clear moonless sky. The stars, aircraft and they claim space shuttle showed up nice and clear. The temperature when we called it a day was 62.2F according to the Gold Canyon weather station. And that was our day. It is amazing how fast they disappear.

 
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